by DJ Donaldson
As he climbed the steps to their porch, he wondered what he would say to his old friends. Despite their attempt to deceive him and his discovery that he had never been as close to Claude as Henry had, he still cared deeply for them and wished he hadn’t played so prominent a role in their downfall. What do you say under such circumstances?
He rang the bell and waited, fighting a childish impulse to run back to his car and drive away before they answered. Getting no response, he rang again.
How would they receive him? Surely they understood what a terrible thing they’d done. Not like Henry, who didn’t seem to appreciate the gravity of it all. Maybe if Henry had seen the victims…
No answer. He rang again.
Hopefully, Olivia and Claude would see his side of it. He had to follow up every lead. It was his job. He couldn’t look the other way, no matter who was implicated.
Still no answer.
Thinking that perhaps they’d gone out, he followed the porch around to the rear of the house to see if the car was there. As he descended the back steps and proceeded along the brick walkway through the patio with its huge ferns in baskets hanging from the gnarled oaks, he noticed that the grounds were as quiet as on the previous morning when he and Kit had talked by the boat dock. He went down a final set of steps and looked through the window in the garage door.
“Oh my, no,” he moaned.
He pulled the door up and stood transfixed by the sight of a vacuum-cleaner hose running from the exhaust of Claude’s BMW to the trunk. Through the rear window, he could see two occupants, neither of them moving. Reluctantly, his feet as heavy as his heart, he approached the driver’s side and opened the door.
Claude and Olivia had never looked better, their complexions rosy with health. He shut the door and looked at the ceiling for a long minute. Then he left the garage and began to stroll over the grounds, onto the boat dock, where he stood for awhile with his hands in his pockets, staring out at the cut in the trees on the other side.
After a time, he walked farther out onto the dock, his eyes looking into the black water for answers. A dragonfly winged into view and landed on a bit of debris among the reeds beside the dock. There was a sudden splash and the dragonfly was gone, eaten by a baby alligator on whose nose it had landed. Across the bayou, he saw a nutria come out of the trees and forage in the saw grass next to the bank, frightening a small turtle, which slid silently from a nearby log and slipped beneath the surface.
Cycles of the swamp.
Events that had gone on since he was a child and would continue whether he was there to witness them or not.
A great continuity.
It was the way of things, not only in the swamp but outside it as well. With a last glance at the gray sky, he turned and walked back to the house to call the sheriff.
About
the Author:
D.J. Donaldson
I grew up Sylvania, Ohio, a little suburb of Toledo, where the nearby stone quarries produce some of the best fossil trilobites in the country. I know that doesn’t sound like much to be proud of, but we’re simple people in Ohio. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree at the U. of Toledo, I became a teacher of ninth grade general science in Sylvania, occupying the same desk my high school chemistry and physics teacher used when he tried unsuccessfully to teach me how to use a slide rule. I lasted six months as a public school teacher, lured away into pursuit of a Ph.D. by Dr. Katoh, a developmental biologist I met in a program to broaden the biological knowledge of science teachers. Katoh’s lectures were unlike anything I’d ever heard in college. He related his discipline as a series of detective stories that had me on the edge of my chair. Stimulated to seek the master who trained Katoh, I moved to New Orleans and spent five years at Tulane working on a doctorate in human anatomy. Stressed by graduate work, I hated New Orleans. When Mardi Gras would roll around, my wife and I would leave town. It wasn’t until many years later, after the painful memories of graduate school had faded and I’d taught microscopic anatomy to thousands of students at the U. of Tennessee Medical School in Memphis (not all at the same time) and published dozens of papers on wound healing that I suddenly felt the urge to write novels. And there was only one place I wanted to write about… mysterious, sleazy, beautiful New Orleans. Okay, so I’m kind of slow to appreciate things.
Practically from the moment I decided to try my hand at fiction, I wanted to write about a medical examiner. There’s just something appealing about being able to put a killer in the slammer using things like the stomach contents of the victim or teeth impressions left in a bite mark. Contrary to what the publisher’s blurb said on a couple of my books, I’m not a forensic pathologist. To gear up for the first book in the series, I spent a couple of weeks hanging around the county forensic center where Dr. Jim Bell taught me the ropes. Unfortunately, Jim died unexpectedly after falling into a diabetic coma a few months before the first book was published. Though he was an avid reader, he never got to see a word of the book he helped me with. In many ways, Jim lives on as Broussard. Broussard’s brilliant mind, his weight problem, his appreciation of fine food and antiques, his love for Louis L’Amour novels… that was Jim Bell. When a new book comes out, Jim’s wife always buys an armful and sends them to Jim’s relatives.
My research occasionally puts me in interesting situations. Some time ago, I accompanied a Memphis homicide detective to a rooming house where we found a man stuck to the floor by a pool of his own blood, his throat cut, and a big knife lying next to the body. Within a few minutes, I found myself straddling the blood, holding a paper bag for the detective to collect the victim’s personal effects. A short time later, after I’d listened to the cops on the scene discuss the conflicting stories they were getting from the occupants, the captain of the general investigation bureau turned to me and said, “What do you think happened?” The house is full of detectives and he’s asking my opinion. I pointed out a discrepancy I’d noticed in the story told by the occupant who found the body and next thing I know, he’s calling all the other detectives over so I can tell them. Later, we took this woman in for questioning. I wish I could say I solved the crime, but it didn’t turn out that glamorous. They eventually ruled it a suicide.
Books by D.J. Donaldson and published by Astor + Blue Editions. www.astorandblue.com
*Cajun Nights
*Blood on the Bayou
*No Mardi Gras For the Dead
*New Orleans Requiem
*Louisiana Fever
*Sleeping With the Crawfish
*Bad Karma in the Big Easy
Listen to all these books on Audible.com
